A trading company with cash tied up in slow-paying customers across Riyadh has often never measured how much of it sits idle. For importers, cash is committed from the moment of shipment, and a container waiting for customs clearance is working capital that earns nothing until it is released.

This work draws on findings from order-to-cash and procure-to-pay work, since working capital is the net effect of how quickly you collect from customers, how quickly you pay suppliers and how much inventory you hold in between.

The three levers and why they interact

Extending supplier payment terms, accelerating collection from customers and reducing inventory each improve working capital on their own. But pulling too hard on one lever creates friction elsewhere. Aggressive supplier terms can damage the relationships and pricing you rely on, and aggressive collections can strain customer relationships if not handled carefully.

Why the right balance differs by business type

A trading business holding substantial inventory to serve a broad customer base has different working capital dynamics from a contractor whose main challenge is the gap between incurring project costs and collecting milestone payments. A generic plan applied to both misses what matters for each.

Quantifying the opportunity

Before recommending actions, we measure your current cash conversion cycle, which combines receivable, payable and inventory days. We compare it with what is realistic for your business model and not with an arbitrary industry average.

What the work delivers

A quantified working capital opportunity broken down by lever, recommendations sequenced by ease of implementation and impact, and a monitoring approach that shows whether improvements are sustained. This often overlaps with cash forecasting work, since the two use much of the same underlying data.

Sustaining the gain after the project

Working capital improvements tend to erode quietly if nobody keeps measuring them after the project ends. Building the relevant metrics into a regular reporting cadence is usually what decides whether the improvement holds.